Saturday 14 January 2012 14.51 EST
First published on Saturday 14 January 2012 14.51 EST

Stephen Twigg, the shadow education secretary, has admitted that Labour did not always get "value for money" in education and that he agrees with more than half of the government's cuts to school building programmes.

Twigg, who was appointed to his brief in October, said that in power he would slash £2bn from the last administration's budget for maintaining schools and building new ones.

The shadow minister said it was an admission that the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, scrapped by the education secretary, Michael Gove, did not always spend money wisely and that it might not be the "best way to move forward" in these straitened times.

The comments follow Labour leader Ed Miliband's acceptance in a landmark speech that Labour needed to show where it would cut spending if it were to be seen as credible enough to take power at the next general election. The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, also said in an interview with the Guardianon Saturday that Labour's "starting point" had to be acceptance of coalition cuts.

Twigg told the Observer that he had come to accept that while the BSF programme had done some good things, it had its faults. "I think this is a very, very good example where I can rise, in a sense, to the challenge Ed Miliband has set for all of us in the shadow cabinet."

He added: "I have accepted that while BSF and other capital programmes did some brilliantly good things – and I have been to some of the schools built under that programme – it didn't always deliver absolute value for money.

"There is scope to do what BSF did at a lower price and there are lessons we can learn from BSF and other projects to achieve greater efficiency."

Twigg's admission is likely to cause anger in some quarters and be seized upon by Gove, who was criticised for scrapping the BSF programme, a decision attacked by the then shadow education minister, Ed Balls, as a "tragedy".

Building projects at more than 700 secondary schools were cancelled when the BSF project was abandoned in July 2010. The decision provoked uproar from councils, unions and Labour politicians who warned of a catastrophic effect on pupils. Under Labour, every secondary school in England was due to be rebuilt or refurbished.

The £2bn figure is equivalent to a 30% cut to the Labour government's planned spending on school buildings between 2010 and 2015, which was the amount that an independent review of BSF revealed in April last year could have been removed through greater efficiency. The government has made a 57% cut to Labour's spending plans.

Twigg's comments follow a similar announcement from the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, who earlier this month said Labour would accept £5bn of government cuts to the military, including the scrapping of Nimrod spy planes.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Observer, the shadow education secretary also said he supported the government in its efforts to find ways to make it easier for headteachers to sack poorly performing teachers.

In the past 10 years, only 17 teachers have been sacked for gross misconduct, despite evidence of a hugely varying quality in the standard of teaching. He also signalled an acceptance of Gove's academy programme by claiming that autonomy for schools was the right way to go. However, he said the education secretary appeared to be "obsessed" with academies and free schools.

• The following correction was published on 22 January 2012:"Twigg unveils £2bn cut to Labour schools plan" (News) discussed plans to make it easier for head teachers to sack poorly performing staff, and said: "In the past 10 years, only 17 teachers have been sacked for gross misconduct." Gross misconduct covers dereliction of duty, physical or sexual abuse, etc, but not poor teaching. We meant incompetence.